Missing Things
by Rapunzel4
Summary: Just a pointless bit of fluff...


Disclaimers: Gundam Wing and its characters do not belong to me. Warnings: 2+1, POV This is a fic of very little plot. Thanks to M.E. For help with the title.  
  
Missing Things By Rapunzel  
  
We were standing in a Laundromat the first time I realized that I loved him.  
  
What's that you say? Not romantic? Well, I suppose Laundromats aren't the most romantic places in the world, now that you mention it. You think I should have realized it while standing at his side, gazing into the sunset, or in a field filled with flowers, or something sappy like that? Sorry, but real life has never been that accommodating.  
  
Anyway, like I was saying, we were standing in a Laundromat, doing our laundry (as if we would be doing anything else there). I had just taken the second load out of the dryer and dumped it on the table. I checked, and sure enough, the jeans were still damp. The dryers never manage to properly dry jeans.  
  
Heero was standing on the other side of the table, folding. That's his special job; I fetch and carry, he sorts and folds. It's a good job for someone as anal retentive as he is. He always has to have everything folded and stacked neatly. He labors over the jeans so that they're just so, with the seams on the bottom cuffs aligned and everything. He tried to show me the "proper way" to do it once, but I'm just too lazy, I guess. To me, a fold's a fold, and I never bother to do it the way he likes it, which is why he insists on doing it himself.  
  
Right about then, Heero had his hands full, since our three loads of laundry were all due to come out of the dryers at about the same time. Sure enough, no sooner had I dumped that load on the table when the last dryer buzzed. I went and got that bunch too, and dumped those clothes into the general pile. That left me with nothing to do until he finished. Since I had already finished the book I had brought with me, I parked my butt on the one small space on the table that wasn't covered with laundry, and settled down to watch Heero go about his task.  
  
Heero is very methodical about everything, and doing laundry is no different. He always starts by folding the shirts and the jeans, since they're the biggest and the easiest to pick out of the pile. Then he works his way down to the underwear, and finally the socks. The towels and sheets go in a separate load, and get folded and set aside accordingly.  
  
I had been sitting there for about five minutes, just watching Heero, when he ran into a snag. He was trying to correctly match up the socks, like he always did, and he came up one short. Not that this was an uncommon occurrence or anything (I swear, there are little sock gnomes that hide in the dryers just waiting to steal people's socks. How else would you explain it?) but it always drives Heero nuts when it happens. He likes everything neat and orderly, and the idea of a sock running around loose with no partner just irritates him.  
  
Heero held up the offending sock, the last one in the pile, and stared at it, at first looking slightly bewildered, then looking annoyed, glaring at the poor, unoffending sock as if it was all its fault.  
  
The sight of Heero Yuy, Gundam pilot extraordinaire, glaring at a common, white, one hundred percent cotton sock was just too much. I started to chuckle. Heero frown, glaring a little harder at the article of clothing in his hand. I started to laugh. Heero transferred his glare to me. I laughed so hard that I toppled over backwards onto the table. Ouch. Not a good idea. Since all the laundry had been folded and stacked back in the basket, I had no cushioning, and the back of my head connected with the hard table top. Even then, I couldn't stop laughing.  
  
I think that was when I realized that I loved him, had loved him for quite some time. And before you say it, no, it had nothing to do with the slight hit I took to the head. It started out as the thought that other people might find Heero's insistence on order rather annoying. Although I'm hardly the neatest person around, I never felt that way. To me, that was just the way Heero was, and I loved him for it like I loved him for almost everything else.  
  
It was something of a revelation. We'd been friends for most of the war, and we've been roommates now for over a year since the war ended, but I had never really considered the possibility that friendship might grow into romantic love. It had, though if you asked me exactly when the change took place, I couldn't tell you if my life depended on it. All I knew was that I had figured out that it had taken place.  
  
When I finally managed to stop laughing and wiped the tears of mirth from my eyes, I looked up to find Heero looking down at me, still with a frown on his face.  
  
"Are you done yet, Duo?" he asked.  
  
"I think so." I smiled at him.  
  
"Good," he said. "I was starting to seriously consider stuffing the sock in your mouth to shut you up."  
  
"Hey!" I said indignantly.  
  
"It certainly isn't good for much else now," Heero said, looking ruefully at the sock in question. "Not without the other one. What happened to it?"  
  
"The other one, you mean? I have absolutely no idea."  
  
"You must have dropped it on the way from the dryer."  
  
"I did not. Look for yourself."  
  
He did, walking all around the Laundromat with head bowed, staring at the floor in the hopes of locating the errant sock. I let him look, even though I knew he wasn't going to find it. He was too stubborn to give up the search. Stubbornness was another characteristic of his that was annoying at times, but endearing all the same. I felt my lips quirking up into a smile again.  
  
"Where the hell did it go?" Heero growled with frustration, after scouring the floors without success.  
  
"No one knows. It's one of those great mysteries of life. Men have devoted their lives to trying to solve such riddles."  
  
"What a waste," was all Heero had to say to that.  
  
"Not really. Think about all those guys who slaved away to think up quantum mechanics. Now that was a waste. They probably spent years coming up with equations that no one remembers for a subject that no one understands."  
  
"I understood it."  
  
"Well, excuse me, Mister Superior," I said haughtily.  
  
I wasn't really peeved with him, and he knew it. He gave me one of those slightly smirking smiles that are probably the only type of smile most people ever see from him. I had accomplished what I'd set out to do; I'd made him forget about the sock, if only for a moment. He tossed the item into the basket with the rest of the clean clothes. I knew that when we got home and he started putting his clothes away, he'd come across it again and probably start the whole thing over again. That's Heero for you.  
  
"Why are you doing that?"  
  
The question caught me by surprise, and I blinked at him for a moment. "Doing what?"  
  
"Smiling like that. You've been doing it for several minutes now."  
  
"Something wrong with smiling?"  
  
I hedged around the question, of course, so I wouldn't have to tell him the reason. What? What do you mean, why didn't I tell him? Of course I wouldn't tell him I loved him! I'd only just realized it myself. I needed some time to think things over and decide on an appropriate course of action. Besides, I wasn't going to ruin the moment by just blurting out something like that.  
  
I didn't stop smiling at him, and he noticed , but he didn't comment after that initial attempt. I think he just figured I'd tell him when I told him. That's another thing I love about Heero: he can be very patient sometimes. Especially with me.  
  
I kept smiling that weird little smile all the way back to the apartment. I couldn't help it. I mean, I had every reason to be pleased. I was in love, and living with the man I was in love with, even if it was just platonic. My little revelation hadn't been shocking, just pleasing. For the first time in a long time, I actually paused long enough to realize that I was content. Not ecstatically happy, but content.  
  
When we got home and Heero started to put his laundry in drawers, he came across the mismatched sock again, and I got to sit on the bed and laugh at him some more while he was being. Heero. And I vowed silently to myself that one of these days, I would share my revelation with him.  
  
Who knows? Maybe it would make him content too. 


End file.
